Julian Assange Speaks The Obvious, Tongues Wag

CORPORATE SPIES

Julian Assange Speaks The Obvious, Tongues Wag

By Elizabeth C.

LIGHTNING ROD JULIAN ASSANGE CALLS FACEBOOK A ”SPY MACHINE” AND PEOPLE QUIVER AS THOUGH HE’S SAYING SOMETHING RADICAL. But any savvy citizen knows he speaks the obvious.

A database containing identifying information on an estimated 600,000 people is on its face a spy’s ideal tool — so much so that the Onion News Network spoofed the social network’s relationship with the CIA. (Video embedded below.)

In addition, the U.S. Patriot Act’s “enhanced surveillance procedures” requires corporations doing business in America to comply with electronic surveillance. And last year documents published last year at Read Write Web reveal the government’s cozy relationship with Facebook. A slide show prepared by two lawyers from the U.S. Department Of Justice clearly implies an easy relationship with Facebook, describing the company as “often cooperative with emergency requests.” The training document entitled “Obtaining and Using Evidence from Social Networking Sites” characterizes information available on social web sites like MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

“Facebook in particular is the most appalling spying machine that has ever been invented,” WikiLeaks founder told Russia Today in an interview posted below. “Here we have the world’s most comprehensive database about people, their relationships, their names, their addresses, their locations and the communications with each other, their relatives, all sitting within the United States. All accessible to US intelligence.

“Facebook, Google, Yahoo — all these major US organizations have built-in interfaces for US intelligence. It’s not a matter of serving a subpoena. They have an interface that they have developed for US intelligence to use.”

“Now, is it the case that Facebook is actually run by US intelligence?,” Assange continued. “No, it’s not like that. It’s simply that US intelligence is able to bring to bear legal and political pressure on them. And it’s costly for them to hand out records one by one, so they have automated the process. Everyone should understand that when they add their friends to Facebook, they are doing free work for United States intelligence agencies in building this database for them.”

Facebook has responded to the charges by saying, “There has never been a time we have been pressured to turn over data — we fight every time we believe the legal process is insufficient. The legal standards for compelling a company to turn over data are determined by the laws of the country, and we respect that standard.”

Facebook — whose California offices is where President Obama officially launched his re-election race — isn’t the only social media suspected of too close relations with the Obama Administration.

Earlier this year, the advocacy group Consumer Watchdog demanded a congressional investigation into Google’s relationship with President Obama’s administration. The group wants details about Google’s “contracts at several U.S. agencies for Google technology and services, the ‘secretive’ relationship between Google and the U.S. National Security Agency, and the company’s use of a U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration airfield in California.”

Here’s the Onion News Network spoof about Facebook’s funding from the CIA. The fake news report calls Mark Zuckerberg a “CIA agent” with the code name “The Overlord.”